THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, October 16, 1994 TAG: 9410140012
SECTION: COMMENTARY PAGE: J5 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: LYNN FEIGENBAUM
LENGTH: Long : 102 lines
By the time Venus Tsiris wraps up her first job of the day, Chesapeake is just beginning to stir. The sun has broken through the night-time gloom, a few kitchen lights are on, and the occasional bathrobe-clad figure picks up the newspaper that Tsiris has left on a front porch.
Tsiris is an adult newspaper carrier, one of the 1,050 independent contractors who deliver the Pilot or Ledger to your door - or driveway or newspaper tube, as the case may be.
A few years ago, more likely a kid would have tossed that newspaper while pedaling by on a bicycle. Just five years ago, of 3,200 carriers, two out of three were under 18. Today, the typical Pilot or Ledger carrier is an adult who picks up the daily bundle of papers not at a street corner but at a centralized distribution center.
The transition has not come easily or even without a sense of loss. Newspaper routes were once the launching ground for young entrepreneurs, along with babysitting jobs and lemonade stands. But that has changed around the country, especially in metropolitan areas.
Economics is one reason. A newspaper truck that once stopped at 50 different street corners can now drop its whole load at one center. Adult carriers can handle larger routes. Plus, sending young boys and girls out alone in the early-morning hours is increasingly scary.
``The Virginian-Pilot hung on to youth carriers longer than most papers,'' said Dee Carpenter, circulation director for the Pilot and Ledger. ``For a paper our size, we should have switched to adults five years ago.''
Despite three decades in the newspaper business, I'm a fairly typical customer. All I know about delivery is that I open my door in the morning and look for the paper. Usually, it's right there. Now and then I have to search in the bushes or under a car but that's rare.
I decided I was long overdue in seeing what the delivery process is all about so, at 3 a.m. on a Sunday morning, I was at a Chesapeake distribution center, a pre-fab warehouse run by manager Mary Hubble.
At the unloading platform, 30,000 Sunday newspapers (actually, just the ``breaking'' news sections - fronts, Metro and Sports) were rolling down a conveyor from two VP-LS trucks, which had picked up the papers at the Greenwich Road presses in Virginia Beach.
In about 30 minutes, those papers would be stacked on tables already covered with the comics, coupons and other preprinted sections. The large rolling doors would open; then, 210 carriers would sort and fold the papers and put them in plastic bags, before loading them into their own cars and trucks.
Later in the day, there would be more than the usual number of subscriber gripes about late deliveries. With the paper in three separate parts, assembling takes longer.
But at 3:30 a.m., the carriers were a cheerful crew. A smiling Joan Dretsch was there with her husband Jerry and their 15 1/2-year-old son, Collin. On weekdays, Joan, a homebound teacher, and Jerry, an active-duty Navy man, handle the 300-paper route. On Saturdays and Sundays, with up to 360 deliveries and a heftier paper, Collin helps out. Mother and son take one carload, dad another.
Nearby, 19-year-old Makeva Brown was folding and bagging by herself. She hopes the 190 papers she delivers every day, along with her job as a Farm Fresh cashier, will pay her way through college.
Retirees Victor and Violeta Pelaez are also relatively new to the carrier business. Natives of Lima, Peru, where they once had a soda fountain, they deliver 200 to 220 papers each day.
In contrast, the Rev. Melvin L. Downing Sr. is a veteran. He's had a motor route for 35 years, delivering more than 300 papers along Military Highway. This day, son Emmitt was assisting. If he can't make it, there are eight other children, 35 grandchildren and countless great-grandchildren to recruit.
But it's Venus Tsiris and her 8-year-old son Andrew who have inherited me for the morning. Somehow, they find room in their car for the three of us plus the 185 bulky bundles of Sunday papers that fill the trunk and the back seat.
Tsiris has unflagging energy and enthusiasm, even at 5:30 in the morning when she sets out for her route - a neat middle-class neighborhood where yards are well kept and filled with Halloween doodads. And there are porches, lots of porches.
These are important to Tsiris. She believes her customers deserve to get newspapers where they want them, and that means getting out of the car and walking up to the door of a house 150 to 200 times every morning. (Throw a heavy Sunday paper from the car and there's a good chance you'll dent the screen door or squash a prize geranium.)
Usually, Tsiris grabs an armload of papers and jogs - she likes the exercise. But today there's a problem: she has a cast on her right leg, the result of a fall during her daytime job as a Chesapeake water-meter reader. So for now, son Andy is helping out. Barking dogs scare him but he delights in the eerie Halloween ghosts and tombstones. And, says his mom, he enjoys his share of the earnings. Those earnings also help his parents, who just bought their first house.
About half of Tsiris' customers pay by mail and are only names on a computer printout; the rest she has gotten to know. One man, a heart patient who can't sleep, hands her a cluster of mums just as dawn is breaking. Otherwise, the two-hour stretch is filled with a steady routine: Tsiris at the wheel, Andy jumping out of the car with as many bags as he can hold. Drive, jump, run, drop the paper, and start all over again.
By the time the last paper has been delivered at 7:30, I've taken several personal vows: From now on, I'll leave a porch light on for my carrier, whom I've never met. And if I had a sprinkler system, I wouldn't time it for the hour when my carrier comes by.
by CNB